“Robin!” said Sarah, jumping up. “How lovely. I was hoping to see you before you left. I’m sorry to have neglected you. But it’s been so hectic.”
“Of course,” I said, smiling. “I quite understand.”
“You’ve been well looked after?”
“Absolutely. Couldn’t have been better.”
“Just what I was saying,” her companion remarked. “I’m Sophie Marsden, by the way.” She rose and stepped towards me, extending a kid-gloved hand.
“Robin Timariot.” I looked at her as we shook, my attention raised now I knew who she was. Louise Paxton’s friend. The one who’d shared her enthusiasm for Expressionist art. And who’d shared a few secrets along the way, perhaps? There was a similarity to Louise. Not in looks so much as manner. A hint of distance. An involuntary implication that much of her mind dwelt on subjects no-one else could understand. It was there in Sophie, albeit more faintly-more impermanently-than it had been in the woman I’d met on Hergest Ridge. But it was there. Like a palm-print. An impression. A dried flower preserved between the pages of a book. No scent. No sap. No life. But stronger than a memory. More than chance likeness or fading recollection. More than could ever be forgotten.
“Sarah’s told me about you, Mr. Timariot. What a help you’ve been to her and Rowena. And to Keith, of course. In introducing him to Bella.”
“Well, I…”
“Louise was a great believer in life, you know. In making the most of it. In casting off past sadnesses. She really would have been pleased at how things have turned out.”
“I… I’m…” I groped for an adequate response. Part of me wanted to echo her sentiment. To draw a neat straight line with Louise Paxton on one side and me incontrovertibly on the other. But another part of me wanted to protest. To rage against a travesty I couldn’t define. To cross the neat straight line. “I’m so glad… to hear a friend of hers say so, Mrs. Marsden.”
“Actually, Robin,” said Sarah, “I was about to take Sophie to see Mummy’s grave. She’s not visited it since the funeral. Rowena’s asked me to put her bouquet on it along with mine. Would you like to come with us?”
“I’d be delighted,” I said. With sudden and utter sincerity.
The graveyard of St. Kenelm’s Church had been full for fifty years or more. Since then, burials had taken place in a small cemetery just outside the village. I drove Sarah and Sophie there at the start of my journey home. Though it was less than a mile from The Old Parsonage, we seemed to have been transported a vast distance from the gabbling gaiety of the wedding party. The cemetery was still and silent, its graves clustered around an avenue of yew trees at one end while the other end stood empty and overgrown, awaiting future use. I didn’t ask why Sir Keith hadn’t come. Why Rowena had felt unable to do this herself. Why Sarah had asked Sophie and me to go with her. Did she, I wondered, regard us as more likely to understand her feelings than her father? Were we the only two she could trust with a share of this experience?
We walked slowly and self-consciously along the gravel path, Sarah a few steps ahead, cradling the bouquets in her arms. She went straight to the grave and placed the flowers beneath the headstone. Sophie and I stood behind her and watched as she knelt beside it. Dew still clung to the grass in the shadow cast by the nearest yew. Its moisture was darkening the hem of her full-skirted dress, turning rose pink to blood red. There was meaning everywhere, if you cared to look. As I looked now, at the inscription on the headstone.
LOUISE JANE PAXTON
11 NOVEMBER 1945-17 JULY 1990
FIRST KNOWN WHEN LOST
The phrase was from a poem by Thomas. Only Sarah could have chosen it. Only she could have known what the choice meant. Though in that moment I seemed to as well.
We stayed a few minutes, no more. Then Sophie and I started diplomatically back towards the gate, while Sarah lingered by the grave. They meant to walk back to the house, so I’d soon be on my solitary way. There was much I wanted to ask Sophie, but there was too little time and no obvious pretext for extending it. Besides, my curiosity about her dead friend would have seemed odd, suspiciously inappropriate. A few mumbled trifles were all that should have been expected of me.
“A peaceful spot,” I ventured, as we reached the gate and looked back at Sarah.
“Yes. I’m glad to have come back. You’ve not been here before?”
“No.”
“You didn’t come to the funeral, of course. But I thought perhaps afterwards…” She glanced round at me, her eyes narrowing beneath the brim of her hat. I sensed suspicion on some score I couldn’t fathom. I sensed there was a question she longed to ask me. But something held her back. “Sarah told me you manage a cricket-bat factory in Petersfield. Is that right?”
“Yes.” The point seemed deliberately banal, provoking me to respond in kind. “What about your husband, Mrs. Marsden? What line is he-”
“Agricultural machinery. But you don’t want to hear about that. Very boring.”
“No more so than the cricket-bat business, I’m sure.”
“Believe me, it is.” Abruptly, she changed the subject. “Have you heard from Henley Bantock, by the way?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Oscar Bantock’s nephew. He’s writing his uncle’s biography. Has written it, I suppose. It’s due out next spring. He came to see me a few months ago. I have two Bantocks on my drawing-room wall and he wanted to photograph them for the book. Wished I hadn’t agreed in the end. Appalling little creep.”
I smiled. “He is rather, isn’t he?”
“Oh, so you have met him?”
“Once, yes. But not about the book. There’s nothing I could have told him anyway.”
“No?”
“Of course not.” Her questions were becoming more and more baffling. I could have believed she was trying to provoke me into disclosing something, but for the fact that there was nothing to disclose. “I never knew Oscar Bantock.”
“No. But you knew his foremost patroness, didn’t you?”
I frowned. My bemusement must by now have been apparent to her. Along with my growing irritation. “You mean Louise Paxton?”
“Who else?”
“You’ve lost me. I met Lady Paxton for a few minutes on the day she died. That’s all. We didn’t discuss Oscar Bantock’s painting career.”
“Then what made you contact the revolting Henley? It’s you who’ve lost me.”
We stared at each other, incomprehension battling with incredulity. I sensed it would be foolish-perhaps dangerous-to try to explain how I’d met Henley. But why I couldn’t have said. Sophie Marsden seemed not just to know something I didn’t, but to know it about me. I couldn’t decide which might be worse. To find out what it was. Or never to.
“Are you two all right?” asked Sarah, surprising both of us, even though her approach along the gravel path can hardly have been stealthy.
“Fine,” replied Sophie. “Just chatting.”
“Yes,” I said. “But as a matter of fact-” I glanced ostentatiously at my watch. “I think I ought to be starting back now. I’ve… er… a long drive ahead of me.”
“Of course,” said Sarah, smiling warmly. “It’s wonderful you were able to share the day with us, Robin. Rowena really appreciated it, I know.”
“Wouldn’t have missed it for the world,” I responded, leading them out through the gate and moving round to the driver’s door of my car. “Well, I…”